What is your favorite tone wood (body / sides) *poll*

[AH Acoustic]

Hi all,


What is your favorite body tone wood for a guitar?


** Note: Multiple answers in your reply are possible.


Thanks for adding a comment if you choose to do so.

[Silly Moustache]

Hi AH,
I can't tick any boxes here - It depends on the type, purpose design of the guitar ...frinstance :

For an acoustic archtop ? Maple.

For a LOUD dreadnought? - mahogany

For a sweet , complex dread, 000 or smaller - EIR

For a bluesy small bodied L-00 style ? Maple.

I've never had walnut or coco ...except in a dessert of course.

[AH Acoustic]

Originally Posted by Silly Moustache

Hi AH,
I can't tick any boxes here - It depends on the type, purpose design of the guitar ...frinstance :

For an acoustic archtop ? Maple.

For a LOUD dreadnought? - mahogany

For a sweet , complex dread, 000 or smaller - EIR

For a bluesy small bodied L-00 style ? Maple.

I've never had walnut or coco ...except in a dessert of course.

Thanks for your reply -- the poll design allows multiple votes.

I expect this sentiment could be common among those who play multiple, so you can click 1 vote per guitar preference / style.

[Bill R]

Most of the acoustic guitars I have had over the past 50 years have been built with some species of rosewood. I've had guitars built with Indian RW and sitka spruce, Cocobolo RW and European (moon) spruce, and Brazilian RW and Lutz spruce. The exceptions are my first good guitar, a 1960's mahogany Gibson, which I no longer have, a 2002, mahogany, Taylor 12-string, which I love, and a 2015 Rainsong (which isn't wood at all). For a short time I had a R Taylor in curly mahogany with a redwood top. A gorgeous guitar, but with very disappointing tone. I didn't keep it very long.

My 2013 Greven OOO is Brazilian and Lutz as will be the OO 12-fret he's building for me now. John seems to be able to work magic with Brazilian rosewood and Lutz spruce, and I'm more than happy to take advantage of his skills. My kids will be pleased to inherit these guitars some day.

Bill

[noledog]

I prefer the punch, presence/definition, and even frequency of sapeale with mahogany a close second... so I voted other.

[Dru Edwards]

I tend to like rosewood on Martin Standard series.

[flaggerphil]

I am partial to all mahogany guitars.

[The Bard Rocks]

Originally Posted by AH Acoustic

Thanks for your reply -- the poll design allows multiple votes.

I expect this sentiment could be common among those who play multiple, so you can click 1 vote per guitar preference / style.

You ask for "combination", yet all the selections are primarily back and set woods.

[H165]

I've owned three rosewood guitars (out of the 200 or so pre-1970 Martins and Guilds I've owned) that, to my ear, were so far superior to anything else I've heard or played that I voted non-EIR rosewood. These three guitars turned heads everywhere I played them, and they were, generally speaking, not exactly lookers.

[DukeX]

No such thing for me. Depends on what I'm playing.

[AH Acoustic]

Originally Posted by The Bard Rocks

You ask for "combination", yet all the selections are primarily back and set woods.

Thank you for noting this, the original post is edited to match the poll.

[Birchtop]

Rosewood

Both, Brazilian and East Indian varieties

[Wade Hampton]

Since there wasn't an option for koa, I voted for walnut, because I like both black walnut and koa as back and side woods about equally. Both are medium density hardwoods that are tonally balanced, favoring neither bass over the treble or vice versa, but provide an even sound from top to bottom.

Where I find walnut most useful is when playing in a group, because it's very projective and cuts through nicely. It doesn't tend to have harmonics as rich as koa has, which is why I really like koa for when I play solo gigs - it's tonally balanced from treble to bass, but is lush-sounding in all the guitar's registers.

With both koa and walnut guitars I need spruce tops to provide me with all of the tone colors and volume that I use. All-koa and all-walnut guitars can sound pretty when they're all broken in, but they offer too limited a tonal palette when compared to similar guitars with spruce tops. Plus they're usually quieter and less projective.

When it comes to spruce tops, I don't have any rigid preferences, because all of the spruce species can sound and look exactly like every other spruce species. That said, I've owned a dulcimer and a small body guitar that both had Adirondack (red spruce) tops, and didn't like either of them enough to keep them for very long. But I've owned three dreadnoughts with red spruce tops and still own two, and have liked the extra bit of treble response that the red spruce seems to impart to large body guitars.

But most of my guitars, mandolins and mountain dulcimers in my permanent working collection of instruments have Sitka spruce tops, and they all sound very good (or I wouldn't keep them.)

All of this aside, though, in addition to the walnut and koa instruments I favor, I own several guitars made of Indian rosewood, three made out of Honduran mahogany, at least one made out of sapele or khaya (my Eastman J-45 copy, which gets an MVP award in terms of inexpensive guitars that I've bought used. The Eastman I own is a serious, superb instrument.) So it doesn't really matter to me what the back and side woods are so long as the instrument sounds good. Yeah, I like black walnut and koa, which are both a little bit less than mainstream when it comes to tonewoods, but if the guitar sounds good, the materials used to build it are immaterial.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

[mikealpine]

Macassar Ebony, paired with a Sinker Redwood top.

[AH Acoustic]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

Since there wasn't an option for koa, I voted for walnut, because I like both black walnut and koa as back and side woods about equally. Both are medium density hardwoods that are tonally balanced, favoring neither bass over the treble or vice versa, but provide an even sound from top to bottom.

Where I find walnut most useful is when playing in a group, because it's very projective and cuts through nicely. It doesn't tend to have harmonics as rich as koa has, which is why I really like koa for when I play solo gigs - it's tonally balanced from treble to bass, but is lush-sounding in all the guitar's registers.

With both koa and walnut guitars I need spruce tops to provide me with all of the tone colors and volume that I use. All-koa and all-walnut guitars can sound pretty when they're all broken in, but they offer too limited a tonal palette when compared to similar guitars with spruce tops. Plus they're usually quieter and less projective.

When it comes to spruce tops, I don't have any rigid preferences, because all of the spruce species can sound and look exactly like every other spruce species. That said, I've owned a dulcimer and a small body guitar that both had Adirondack (red spruce) tops, and didn't like either of them enough to keep them for very long. But I've owned three dreadnoughts with red spruce tops and still own two, and have liked the extra bit of treble response that the red spruce seems to impart to large body guitars.

But most of my guitars, mandolins and mountain dulcimers in my permanent working collection of instruments have Sitka spruce tops, and they all sound very good (or I wouldn't keep them.)

All of this aside, though, in addition to the walnut and koa instruments I favor, I own several guitars made of Indian rosewood, three made out of Honduran mahogany, at least one made out of sapele or khaya (my Eastman J-45 copy, which gets an MVP award in terms of inexpensive guitars that I've bought used. The Eastman I own is a serious, superb instrument.) So it doesn't really matter to me what the back and side woods are so long as the instrument sounds good. Yeah, I like black walnut and koa, which are both a little bit less than mainstream when it comes to tonewoods, but if the guitar sounds good, the materials used to build it are immaterial.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

Thank you for this commentary, and in retrospect, I think that Koa was certainly a prime candidate to have been included. This was certainly not a perfect poll question.

Your expanded insights are much appreciated.

- Andrew